Benjamin held that true philosophy must accommodate occult practices like tea-leaf reading
Evidence
One of Benjamin’s more extreme formulations at this period, recorded by Scholem, was: `A philosophy which cannot include and explicate the possibility of using tea-leaves for fortune-telling cannot be a true one.’ This was evidence of the kind of daring contact with the occult and the obscure which Bloch, whom Benjamin met in Berne in 1918, also displayed. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 344
Categorization
- SHARE: The tea-leaves quote is a perfect way to introduce Benjamin’s anti-positivist philosophical stakes to a friend interested in occultism’s intellectual history.
- XREF: connects to: Benjamin demanded that philosophy accommodate even fortune-telling and the occult.; Benjamin’s own work fused mysticism and modern urban experience — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1494; Benjamin conceived the philosopher as interpreter of reality written in an Adamitic language. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 356
Broader Connections
- Benjamin’s own work fused mysticism and modern urban experience
#corroborates(0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 1494 - Benjamin conceived the philosopher as interpreter of reality written in an Adamitic language.
#corroborates(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 356